I've been reading everyone's issues and I offer no resolution or suggestions but on a hopeful note I suppose, I can tell you that I have been using my creative Zen 16gb flawlessly with MM for 2 years now on my XP SP2 & SP3 system. All features have been utilized, auto-sync (back & forth)...etc.... I have used all possible formats that the Zen is able to play and at all bit depths... No errors, no issues! So it is possible to be issue free.

I have some questions regarding the original screenshots:
1. What Synchronization mask do you use? It doesn't seem to be the default one, right? Looks like ...\<filename> is used?
2. Does the problem occur with WMAs only? The example refers to wmas, but maybe you have already experienced it for mp3s as well...

I just want to get as much info as possible in order to be able to reproduce it...